Neural Correlates of Enhanced Memory for Meaningful Associations with Age

Amer, Tarek; Giovanello, Kelly S.; Nichol, Daniel; Hasher, Lynn; Grady, Cheryl L.

doi:10.1093/cercor/bhy334

Cited by 26 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 87 publications

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“…In one notable study, older adults showed greater default network activity and enhanced functional connectivity between default and control-network regions during retrieval of realistic versus unrealistic grocery-item prices using a subsequent memory paradigm. The authors interpreted these functional brain differences as evidence for greater reliance on stored memory representations for meaningful associations in older adults in contrast to greater reliance on controlled encoding and retrieval processes in young (Amer, Giovanello, Nichol, Hasher, and Grady, 2019).…”

Section: Decha: a Unified Account Of Cognitive And Brain Agingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Shifting Architecture of Cognition and Brain Function in Older Adulthood

Spreng

Turner

2019

Perspect Psychol Sci

200

177

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Cognitive aging is often described in the context of loss or decline. Emerging research suggests that the story is more complex, with older adults showing both losses and gains in cognitive ability. With increasing age, declines in controlled, or fluid, cognition occur in the context of gains in crystallized knowledge of oneself and the world. This inversion in cognitive capacities, from greater reliance on fluid abilities in young adulthood to increasingly crystallized or semanticized cognition in older adulthood, has profound implications for cognitive and real-world functioning in later life. The shift in cognitive architecture parallels changes in the functional network architecture of the brain. Observations of greater functional connectivity between lateral prefrontal brain regions, implicated in cognitive control, and the default network, implicated in memory and semantic processing, led us to propose the default-executive coupling hypothesis of aging. In this review we provide evidence that these changes in the functional architecture of the brain serve as a neural mechanism underlying the shifting cognitive architecture from younger to older adulthood. We incorporate findings spanning cognitive aging and cognitive neuroscience to present an integrative model of cognitive and brain aging, describing its antecedents, determinants, and implications for real-world functioning.

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Section: Decha: a Unified Account Of Cognitive And Brain Agingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Shifting Architecture of Cognition and Brain Function in Older Adulthood

Spreng

Turner

2019

Perspect Psychol Sci

200

177

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“…One possibility is a division of labor, such that prior knowledge biases the cortical memory system toward assimilation of novel information 16 , while shifting hippocampal processes to resolve interference 23 . Across rodents and humans, studies demonstrate that during new learning, prior knowledge enhances cortical activation and cortico-cortical functional connectivity, while also modulating hippocampal activation and functional connectivity with the cortex 11,18,19,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34] (for reviews, see refs. 16,35,36 ).…”

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confidence: 99%

Prior knowledge promotes hippocampal separation but cortical assimilation in the left inferior frontal gyrus

2020

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An adaptive memory system rarely learns information tabula rasa, but rather builds on prior knowledge to facilitate learning. How prior knowledge influences the neural representation of novel associations remains unknown. Here, participants associated pairs of faces in two conditions: a famous, highly familiar face with a novel face or two novel faces while undergoing fMRI. We examine multivoxel activity patterns corresponding to individual faces before and after learning. The activity patterns representing members of famous-novel pairs becomes separated in the hippocampus, that is, more distinct from one another through learning, in striking contrast to paired novel faces that become similar. In the left inferior frontal gyrus, however, prior knowledge leads to integration, and in a specific direction: the representation of the novel face becomes similar to that of the famous face after learning, suggesting assimilation of new into old memories. We propose that hippocampal separation might resolve interference between existing and newly learned information, allowing cortical assimilation. Thus, associative learning with versus without prior knowledge relies on radically different computations.

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“…Studies in aging populations support that resting network activity and connectivity patterns underlie enhancement of memory in older adults for meaningful associations [26]. It has also been shown that working memory (WM)-related brain activity is greater in older than in younger adults, while such cortical over-recruitment in advanced old age has been attributed to a compensatory mechanism [27].…”

Section: Improvement Of Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%